


Just Fucking Live

by philsgiggles



Series: Fic Fests [3]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2012 Era (Phandom), Depressed Dan Howell, Depression, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, References to Depression, Suicide, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-11
Updated: 2018-10-11
Packaged: 2019-07-29 19:21:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16270715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philsgiggles/pseuds/philsgiggles
Summary: Written for the Bingo Fic Fest for the prompts "2012" and "Canon with a Twist" and for World Mental Health Day.Dan can't do it anymore.





	Just Fucking Live

**Author's Note:**

> Heavy suicide trigger warning. My fucked-up canon twist came from thinking about the multiverse and the question of "What if Dan had reacted even worse?", along with [my own issues, recent events, and] World Mental Health Day. Yes, it's late. I wasn't sure if I could post this.
> 
> I think I needed to write this. Thank you all.
> 
> Suicide trigger warning. That's what this fic is. Suicide trigger warning.
> 
> I'll put in the end notes how I would have ended this. Maybe someday I'll come back and resolve it if I can.

2012 passed in distinct moments. Moments of levity and peace, of muted joy and drunken dullness. But other moments were more pervasive, seeping into the cracks in Dan’s marred psyche and leaving traces of black ink should he try to push them away, a film of darkness that could never disappear, not completely.

 

And he did try. He needs to add that he did try, even if it didn’t seem that way. He tried to be okay, he tried to be _normal_ , and even though it muddled things and might have even made them worse, he kept trying. Because he wanted to be fixed, more than anything in the world. He wanted to be cured. But he had no plan for how.

 

Thursday evening found Daniel Howell taking a walk alone in the woods behind the old forgotten factory on the outskirts of town. He had slipped out of their apartment in the dead of the night, uncaring of what his flatmate might think, and booked a train ticket to the middle of nowhere. God knows how he even remembered the place’s name after so many years. Perhaps it was the stories he heard as a child about the town sticking with him.

 

Many years before, longer ago than anyone Dan knew could remember, it was bustling. Filled with workers and churning out shoe after shoe after shoe, it was the most successful of its kind in the region. Every morning at sunrise, hundreds of workers would walk the freshly-paved path and through the heavy front doors. They would funnel through the main entrance, one by one as birds chirped in the sky, saying hellos and quickly making their way to their own stations. Hours later and incredible amounts of inventory produced, they would pack up, weary and defeated, and walk back home to return again the next day. The factory flourished.

 

And this was the way of life they loved. For even though it was difficult and menial work, it was the best that could be found in the tiny town, the birthplace of his mother. And when the factory grew to be so large that it could no longer operate out of the single location, and more space was built, the town was prospering. Money flowed in from all directions, and the townspeople were sated and happy.

 

But as the decades passed, time began to wear at it. The insides, the workers and their machines, were the first to go, and soon it moved to the building itself.

 

The heads of the now-enormous corporation slowly began to cut off the funding for the workers’ wages. There simply wasn’t enough to sustain everyone. Their pay decreased more and more until they were left floundering and unable to survive off of it alone. They began to starve and wither away, and the town with them. The people were struggling, working their fingers to a pulp to provide for their children. Starving to death, slowly but surely, they saw only one option.

 

The workers began to revolt.

 

They were miserable and dying off, and the least they could do was, even if there was no hope for them, make their bosses miserable, as well. They asked and begged and pleaded nonstop and scrounged around for any cash they could find. When suddenly, it seemed that someone might be listening.

 

At first, it appeared their pleas would be answered. New laws came into play demanding that the workers have fair pay and hours. Funds were funneled in from investors to help give the workers a fighting chance. The company started new programs to help ease the workers’ pain. And they were all hopeful.

 

And it did work for a while. That’s something that most people would not tell you. It did work for a while. The townspeople grew more at ease, and it seemed the hard times were completely behind them. Of course there were cutbacks when the big recession hit, and in all of the little bumps along the road, but it always picked right back up afterwards.

 

But then it stopped working. When corporate went to pay, they found themselves grasping at air. There was simply no money to be found. The funds had continued to arrive, but they simply ceased to be enough. And the other investors they found that were suitable for the company came with stipulations that were unacceptable.

 

Perhaps it was all from outside influence, things out of their control. The economic situation, after all, had never been optimal in such an area. And perhaps it was doomed from the start with poor investments by those who created the chain and poor managing by the holding company.

 

But it seemed, at least to the spectators of it all, that the blame laid heavily on the shoulders of those in charge. If they had handled matters differently, if they had seen the direction the company was headed in and made changes, got help sooner, maybe it would still be up and running today. But perhaps they simply didn’t want to admit defeat.

 

Eventually, however, it didn’t matter, the _what-if's_ and _if-only's_. The factory closed its doors soon after yet another vicious spiral out of control. An in-between period saw the businesspeople scrambling in a vain attempt to correct their enormous mistakes. But it soon proved overwhelming and impossible to combat.

 

To this day, the factory was rumored to be haunted, so much so that, unlike, perhaps, other so-called “haunted” buildings, no one dared go near it. It was an unspoken agreement. No one ever got within a mile of the place, it being so full of ghosts of the past and memories passed down over time.

 

So Dan knew it was the perfect place.

 

Leaves crunched under his feet, a loud sound he didn’t bother to hear, as he walked forward, his steps careful and consistent. It reminded him of one fateful trip to the distant forest, years ago, when Dan, in a futile attempt at “big-brother-ing”, had taken his brother on a camping trip meant to last a weekend. In the end, it was only a night, as at the time, neither of them were equipped to handle nature in small doses, especially Dan, let alone immerse themselves in it for days on end. Dan used to smile at the memory, recalling the buzz of the insects and the soft sound in the distance he _swore_  was an owl _because how cool would that be?_

 

Now, his face remained stiff. His eyes stared ahead. And he walked deeper into the forest.

 

It was objectively pretty, autumn colors seeping into the plant life and the leaf-covered ground, casting the world in shades of orange and red, the beautiful death people so celebrated. There was a flower by his feet as he crossed a footbridge, thriving despite the death around it, but its petals held no interest, so Dan kept his gaze out of the shrubbery.

 

He did not wonder what his flatmate would say. Nor what he would do. Nor what he would feel. Because he couldn’t - because that was why he had to force his legs one after the other forward, kicking up dust.

 

And as the path emerged from the forest to run along the river, the sun glinted off of the water. It hurt his eyes and he could make no sense of the patterns of the fluffy white clouds, dotted with shadows of birds, so he set his sights lower to the ground.

 

A squirrel dashed out from behind a tree, rustling the leaves, but its tail was stumpy and sad, and Dan found no beauty in its marred form. So his eyes were trained straight ahead.

 

Hiking up the mountain, not noticing the burn in his legs nor the scrapes on his hands when he pushes himself up boulders and ledges, he felt more raw with every step, as if someone had taken shards of glass and injected them into his blood. He passed the mangled corpse of a small bird, its head concave and body nearly covered in fallen leaves, and wondered how it died. Had it fallen from its nest? It was too late in the year now. Had it been swiped out of the sky by a bored predator that didn’t bother finishing the job? Reaching inside of him for some kind of _something_ , he found only emptiness. He didn’t care.

 

When Dan finally reached the peak, he looked out upon the view of his home before him, but it sparked no love inside him.

 

He looked out upon a black bird soaring through the air. Dan had always wanted to learn to fly.

 

He looked and looked and spread his arms and jumped, catching the wind on his outstretched fingers and wondering what happened to those baby birds who jumped too soon. If they died when they hit the ground or if they had to wait for death to come, paralyzed.

 

He supposed he would soon find out.

**Author's Note:**

> I love you all so fucking much. COME TALK TO ME IF YOU NEED ANYTHING EVER EVEN IF YOU THINK IT'S LITTLE. Things can get shitty but they can also get okay every once and a while and you're strong enough to wait and grow. I believe in you and I love you and I'm always here. You're so necessary.
> 
> You can find me on Tumblr at moonroomsnuggles and Twitter at moonrmsnuggles if you ever ever feel like you need someone. Yes this means you. <3
> 
> National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (US): 1-800-273-8255
> 
>  
> 
> How it would have ended:  
> Dan survives and Phil is there, helping him through it. They fight together, and it's hard, so hard, but it's all worth it because in the end they're okay. More than okay.  
> Dan signs on with Young Minds sooner and sees a therapist twice a week, then once, then once a month. He helps so many people that are going through what he did, and, though it's hard, he knows he can do it because he has Phil by his side. And because he knows that no matter how dark it is, how bad it might seem, there's always at least a smidgen of good. He just has to find it.


End file.
